The City at Dawn
by slightowl
Summary: A growing collection of LxLight drabbles, collected from my Tumblr account.
1. Sevilla

an lxlight drabble for tumblr user deathnoting. the prompt was: _lxlight, taking place in some country that isn't japan_.

**Sevilla**

In Seville, the blood oranges are rotting.

It is late summer. A solemn newscaster on the television warns of a heat wave rolling in from North Africa. L and Light spend most of their time splayed across the tile floor of the kitchenette, sharing one laptop. Outside, the oranges drop, leaving pink suicide-stains on the sidewalk. The scent is pervasive and bitter, accumulating in their hair and clothes and bed sheets.

L has Light doing menial tasks; namely, interviewing witnesses over the phone while posing as the chief of police. For seven days, there have been sightings of a ghost ship, moored off a port on the Guadalquivir River. The surrounding neighborhood has reached a level of apocalyptic panic, but Light is having difficultly corroborating even the most general details about the ship's appearance.

"There's nothing to this," Light finally snaps, strung out on lukewarm espresso. When he'd begun working for L, Light had expected to be uncovering vast conspiracies, dismantling organized crime syndicates, recovering stolen masterpieces. Instead, he's spent seven months trailing L across the globe, chasing rumors and occult artifacts, attempting to quell L's newfound fixation on the supernatural.

When L doesn't immediately answer, Light continues, "It all sounds like mass hysteria to me. There are groups of parishioners praying on the docks. The bishop is predicting the end of the world."

"Did he give a date?" L asks, swatting a fly away from his caramel custard.

Light can't think of anything sufficiently terrible to say to that. They sit in silence for a moment, listening to the rattle of an elevator climbing through the hotel walls.

Three weeks ago, they had been in Gaborone, investigating reports of an enormous jackal that had torn seven poachers to pieces. Before that, it had been Nova Scotia, where locals claimed a wendigo was sucking villagers into the sky. Light's memories of his last year in Tokyo are pale and inconsistent, but he has seen enough of his own case files to know that L is hunting shinigami, or something like them.

"Mm, you're right," L finally concedes, absently twisting his mug against the kitchen floor. His cheeks and forehead are flushed. A sullen, introspective L is like a tremor before the ground cracks open. "Let's think of this as a vacation, then."

All Light knows of Seville is what he sees through the window — minarets that tear into the underbellies of low clouds, the silhouette of a Moorish fortress on the hilltop. L leans in and nips at the soft pulp of skin behind Light's ear. His hair is slightly damp, and cool against Light's cheekbone.

"I was reading about green lights seen in the skies above Denmark."

"Stop that," Light says, "You just said we were on vacation."

"It's a very short vacation."

Sometimes, L's voice feels like a rubber band, snapping against Light's wrist. Tomorrow night, they will be board a business jet for Copenhagen. After that, perhaps Tangiers, or Salzburg, or Singapore. But tonight, they are in Spain, and Spain is the country of lovers, and murderers, and survivors of war — of which, they are all three.

The appliances in their hotel room hum a comforting white noise, the same in every city they pass through. L's left hand undoes the top buttons of Light's shirt, while the right closes windows on his laptop. L kisses Light like they are poised on the edge of an old argument. L kisses Light like he is the source of all his irrational fears.

L kisses Light like he is as bitter as the oranges, piled on the streets below them.


	2. Swamplands

a short lxlight drabble for tumblr user, ktyaklshnky. the prompt was: f_eeding the birds_.

They solve the Sangully Strangler case with record speed. L suspects Light is motivated by the dense clouds of insects, and the creamy, sour smell of water around them. Light is on edge, snappish. They've had sex once since they've been here, and it had been interrupted by two raccoons that'd broken in through the kitchen window and rooted through L's breakfast cereal.

To be honest, L hadn't been having a terrible time until that moment, but the raccoons had eaten the marshmallows and left the toasted oats. The attack had seemed personal.

"I was going to ask what you're doing, but I think I'd rather not know," Light says, stepping out onto the porch after his fourth consecutive night of sleeplessness. It is dawn, or nearly so. There are golden diamonds of light climbing up the Cyprus grove. Light has dark splotches beneath each eye, but his hair is neatly combed, and he's dressed as if they are about to stroll along the Champs-Élysées. He tips his mug, and takes an experimental taste of chicory coffee.

L tosses another handful of oat pieces, and the crows rise all at once, snapping at the flakes in mid-air. "What do you mean? I'm feeding the birds. This is a time-honored tradition in most countries, you know. Don't you have pastimes in Japan?"

"I really don't think there should be that many birds."

Light may have a point. The crows are queued along the railing, clinging sideways to the chain of the porch swing, stuffed into the windowsill. L had lost count after the first fifty, and their numbers have swelled since then. The ones who cannot find space on the porch orbit in the updraft overhead. They cast streaming reflections on the water, like they have counterparts trapped in the river's current.

"They like me," L says. "Crows can be remarkably friendly, you know."

"A little too friendly, if you ask me. There's one biting your shoelace."

L kicks the bird away, but it returns after a moment, attempting to unravel the hem of his jeans. Another is perched by L's shoulder, and seems to be reaching for his split ends with a hooked finger. There is an interested click by L's left ear, and then another by his right.

"Maybe you should come inside," Light says. He has already backed into the doorway, and has a hand hovering over the knob. A droplet of his coffee has escaped the rim of his mug and is traveling over his knuckles.

L flings the rest of the cereal over the edge of the balcony, but only a handful of birds follow. The others are paying what seems like a frightening amount of attention to his now empty hands.

"Just get up slowly and back away," Light says, but when L looks over his shoulder, the bastard is already halfway into the cabin. Light has always valued self-preservation over chivalry. L does not exactly blame him, but he is pretty sure a crow has just defecated in his hair.

Light manages to shut the door before the birds descend en mass, and L can hear him _guffawing _through the window. L does not think he has ever heard Light truly laugh before. Even though it is breathless and laced with delighted sadism, the sound is both pleasant and frightening, which is a combination L has found he enjoys.

L is pretty sure he hates nature, and everything in it. This sentiment expands to include Light Yagami, on the rare days when L turns to find him sleeping in the radioactive glow of his laptop, his breath a gentle drawl in an otherwise silent room.

Light's face watches from the other side of the window, the shadows in his eye sockets like two fissures.

"You've abandoned me. Don't think I won't remember this," L calls, swatting at a crow on his shoulder whose beak is dangerously close to his left ear.

But to be honest, L hadn't expected anything less.


	3. Tumblr Drabbles, May 2014

Drabbles from Tumblr, May 2014

* * *

><p>The city is held together by sagging trolley wires. L likes to watch pedestrians swerve to avoid the carts, carrying sacks of wild coffee and three-penny postcards towards the coast. The air tastes of salted cod.<p>

If Beyond was here, he has left already. Cargo ships depart for Shanghai each morning, tearing away the rotting docks. On the balcony, Light shoos away parrots with a hotel towel. They scream obscenities at him in Portuguese.

"Leave them alone, " L calls, partly because he is fond of birds, and partly because Beyond always leaves an echo behind him, hidden in chatter from the city below.

* * *

><p><em>for: xforestofinkx<em>

_prompt: L and Light go on safari._

"I can drive anything," L says, and as it turns out, he's right. Light has seen him maneuver a bi-plane over black cloudbanks, row a gondola across Venetian lagoons, weave a scooter through the sun-beaten streets of a north African market.

The Land Rover, however, seems to be L's favorite. It is a battered, post-war monster with a bullet scar above the gas tank. They plow through a grove of wild acacia, braking against a high ledge that overlooks the savannah. Light lifts his binoculars, and catches sight of a bull elephant travelling a lone dirt path.

"He was here," Light says, because he has learned to recognize Beyond's dark stain upon the landscape.

L doesn't answer. He slaps a mosquito draining blood from his cheek, but his eyes stay fixed on the horizon, awash in ancient light.

* * *

><p><em>for: yagamism<em>

_prompt: L, Light and Beyond play mario kart in a heatwave._

"Are these really necessary?" Beyond says, lifting his wrist. His fingers are pruned and seem hastily drawn, like a carbon sketch, an underpainting. The motion rattles both his handcuffs and the ice cubes in his lemonade. They are disturbingly similar sounds.

"Yes," L and Light respond at once. A moment later, Light adds, "And I get to be Bowser this time."

Everything is sluggish in this heat. The chickens in the coop downhill release long, mournful wails. The television rumbles in protest to their commands. Earlier, two snails had appeared on the windowsill and promptly died, leaving identical cracked shells behind.

"L, tell him I'm always Bowser," Beyond says, stretching the chain to reach for his controller. Light pulls a damp napkin from beneath the ice tray and drapes it over his forehead.

"I really hate you both sometimes, " L says, which is true, and makes his victory all the more satisfying.


End file.
